The Night Manager’s television run is almost at an end, but speculation is rife that The Night Manager 2 is already deep in discussion.

The author of the original book, John le Carré, neglected to provide a sequel, but the acclaim for the BBC dramatisation, with mesmeric central performances by Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, has been so great that speculation is rife that the BBC might go ahead and make one anyway.

Le Carré has given no sign of planning a return to the 1993 tale, his first post-cold-war novel, but according to the Radio Times, the BBC is in detailed talks with the Ink Factory, the production company run by two of his sons, about a second series featuring some of the characters.

How plausible is John le Carré’s The Night Manager?

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The series, with its lavish settings and Hollywood production values, has cost about £3m an hour – half paid for by the BBC, half by the co-production partners – but attracted audiences of more than 8 million for its opening episode and has averaged more than 6 million for the succeeding episodes. It has regularly thrashed ITV’s rival offering, the Trollope adaptation Doctor Thorne, in the flagship Sunday night drama slot.

Le Carré published his first spy novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in 1963, under an assumed name, because the real David Cornwell was still working for British intelligence. Now aged 84, he is about to publish a memoir of life “as a writer who, when I was very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British intelligence”.

In a recent piece for the Guardian, le Carré was remarkably laid back about the many changes made in updating his novel for the BBC’s version. “By now I am simply part of the audience, because this isn’t the film of the book, it’s the film of the film,” he said.

Alison Graham, the TV editor of the Radio Times, is firmly opposed to the idea of The Night Manager 2. “Let’s not spoil things by turning Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) into a kind of generic secret agent,” she writes in the current issue. “Besides, Hiddleston will probably be James Bond by then.”